Last week this photo came up on my facebook news feed. Wow! It may look ordinary to you--a simple wedding photo, but no, this is huge! Our God is so big!!
The little lady in the long blue/green dress....she is the start of this big story--that is really God's big story, of course. Dica (Gee-kah) is her name and the last time I saw her she was a young mother of 7 or 8 children...the oldest around 12. She is a typical "ribeirinha" or "river person" who grew up way interior here in Brazil, deep in the jungles on a tributary of the Amazon. She lived close enough to the tribal group my parents served as missionaries that she entered their world when she married one of the young men from the tribe.
This little lady not only gained a new culture and language by mixing with the tribal group, she began to hear God's Word being taught by the missionaries in her new village. She was the first one to truly say "Yes!" to the gospel and then began years of learning and struggle to raise her many children in a culture that was filled with blatant opposition to the truths of God's Word she was learning. The last time I saw this lady, I was spending time helping her oldest daughter learn to read. I remember overhearing a conversation she had with my mother about her concerns for her 12 year old daughter in the culture that demanded immorality as an expected "norm". I remember wondering what would become of not only her oldest daughter, but the whole string of children, at that time ending with this young groom in the photo above.
Bira (Beet-a) was the baby when I last was there in the village. Several of Dica's children over the years have been able to leave the village to attend a Brazilian high school and then go on to study at a Bible School. Bira met his beautiful bride at the Bible School and they have completed the course and now are headed soon for missionary training school. Bira and Patricia have a deep desire to minister to Bira's own tribal group to see many more of them enter into the family of God.
Just seeing this dear jungle lady in her long beautiful dress watching her son marry a pastor's daughter and with a goal of coming back to serve his own people...Well, I got choked up seeing this photo. I don't think any of us who knew her 25 years ago would ever have thought this photo would be possible today. God is so much BIGGER than we think!
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